Rapport is what we experience when we feel at ease with and trust one another. It is the result of our attitudes towards one another.
In NLP we consider rapport to be an essential foundation for good communication because without rapport there may be a lot of talk but there is little genuine exchange of views.
It can be useful to have a variety of ways of facilitating and enhancing this rapport and NLP provides us with lots of these, some of which are manipulative, some are clumsy, and some are elegant and respectful. (By the way, in NLP the word “elegant” is used to describe the most simple and effective way of doing something.)
Last week’s @pegasusnlp Twitter Tips began a new series of tips on Rapport so let’s look at the featured Tips (these are in italics below): Continue reading
Sitting in Caffe Nero a few days ago I had the uncomfortable experience of watching and hearing a loud and brash young manager (unintentionally, I think) humiliating a soft-spoken direct report.
As appraisals go it was a pretty thorough example of how not to do it.
There was no quality of rapport. The manager was clicking his pen, constantly shifting his position in his chair, bouncing his knees under the table as if to an internal fast paced rhythm, he’d start off his very loud comments by looking briefly at his victim and then continue the comments in a quite mechanical manner while gazing out the window beside their table, as if reciting a rehearsed spiel.
He (we’ll call him Jack) demonstrated no attempt to understand the other person’s (let’s call him Mohan) viewpoint and in fact showed little interest in Mohan at all. Continue reading
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